Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  When I didn’t answer he repeated the question: “You’re in love with Jerry Hough, aren’t you?”

  This time he evidently took my silence as assent, for he murmured: “And there’s Norma. I guess we’re both in the same boat, except that I have far less of a prayer than you.”

  “Aren’t we getting off the point, Steve?” I said, pulling my hands away. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to tell that fellow Trant a crazy story without letting on who told it to you. Can you do that?”

  “I can try,” I said bleakly. “What’s the story?”

  He turned away so that I could not see his face. Then very slowly he said: “I saw Grace Hough last night, Lee, hours after she’d left the theater.”

  For a second I felt too shaken to say anything, but at last I managed to ask: “You—you don’t mean you had a date with her?” Steve shook his head. “I ran into her by accident about three-thirty in the morning. I was driving back from New York and I stopped for gas at that service station just outside the village. There was another car there with a man in it—and Grace. I didn’t recognize her at first, but just as I pulled up by the pump she got out of the car. I heard her say something to the fellow she was with about telephoning; then she went off into the station and I knew it was Grace all right.”

  “But the man with her?” I asked quickly. “Did you see him?”

  “Not very well. He never got out of the car. But I guess he was the guy Nick Dodd said you saw Grace with outside the theater. He wasn’t wearing a hat and you could have seen his hair a mile off. It was red as a Stop sign.”

  “So the naval officer did drive her back,” I said, trying to get some logical sequence to my thoughts. “But who on earth was Grace telephoning at that time of night?”

  “Haven’t the remotest idea. But she seemed kind of excited and pepped up when she came out.”

  “What coat was she wearing?”

  “What coat?” Steve hesitated a moment. “When I saw her she was wearing a light colored fur like the one you have.”

  So my hunch had been wrong. It must have been later that Grace made that bewildering change of coats.

  Steve’s profile was only a silhouette now in the deepening darkness. “I’d hoped she wouldn’t see me,” he went on, “but she must have recognized the car. She came over and peered in through the window in that short-sighted way of hers and said: ‘Oh, Steve, wait a minute. I’m going to want you.’ Then she calmly walked over to the other car and said something to the red-head. I don’t know what it was, but he just up and drove away toward New York—as fast as he could make it.”

  “You mean he left her there with you?”

  “He left her with me all right.” Steve’s laugh tilted a trifle unsteadily. “She got into my car without so much as a by-your-leave and said: ‘You don’t mind doing a bit of chauffeuring for an old friend, do you, Steve?’”

  I caught my breath. “Then it was you who drove her back to college?”

  “It was I who started driving her back,” Steve corrected, a rather unpleasant smile twisting his mouth. “But the whole thing was so completely crazy I’d have thought Grace was tight if I hadn’t known she never touched liquor. I was just starting up the car when she did something perfectly cockeyed. She fumbled in her bag and brought out two letters.”

  “Two letters,” I exclaimed. “Sure it wasn’t three, Steve?”

  “No, she only gave me two. One was for Jerry and the other was very formally addressed. It was to—Mrs. Penelope Hudnutt, Dean of Women.”

  That came as a real shock; a shock which left no room for speculation about that third letter which seemed to have vanished into thin air. Grace had written a letter to Penelope Hudnutt last night and Penelope had said nothing about it to Lieutenant Trant. I could not fail to see the almost appalling implications of that fact, particularly when it was linked up with what Marcia had told me and my memory of the Dean’s yellow sedan rushing out into the night.

  “Go on, Steve,” I begged, horribly curious and yet somehow dreading what would come next.

  “That seemed a little too screwy even for Grace. I asked her right out why the hell she couldn’t deliver—or mail—her letters for herself. That’s when she dropped her bombshell. She said she wasn’t going back to college right away. She had a date to meet someone—somewhere else.”

  “A date at that time of night!” I exclaimed. Then hardly daring to ask it, I said: “Where?”

  “She wanted me to drop her at the disused quarry—you know, just where the road from Wentworth turns to join the New York highway.”

  I suppose I might have guessed that from the beginning—that the old quarry was destined to have a far more terrible significance in the case than had át first appeared. But when I heard Steve actually name it as the place of Grace’s rendezvous, I felt suddenly numb.

  My voice sounded hoarse and far away as I said: “And you did drop her at the quarry, Steve?”

  “I didn’t want to. I felt certain she was going to do something crazy. I knew I ought to stop her if I could. But—well, I just couldn’t.” He was speaking now with obvious reluctance. “I know it sounds low to slam Grace at a time like this, but she pulled a mean trick on me, Lee. She forced me to drive her to that quarry.”

  “But how—?”

  “She had me just where she wanted me.” There was a harsh, dangerous note in Steve’s voice. “You see I was fond of Grace once. Remember how we used to run around together—all three of us, and Jerry, too? Well, I was damn fool enough to tell Grace something at that time. I wanted her advice as to how a nice girl would react to a certain none too savory incident in my none too savory past. I told her the incident and I told her who the girl was that I was crazy about. Last night she threw the thing up at me. She threatened to spill the dirt if I didn’t do as she asked me.”

  “Grace actually threatened to queer you with your girl?” I exclaimed.

  “That’s not the half of it. If that had been all I’d have told Grace to go to hell and tipped her out into the nearest ditch.” He gave a short laugh. “It just so happens she couldn’t have hurt me in that direction because I haven’t a prayer with the girl anyhow. But she could have raised merry hell in the Carteris family.”

  He paused: “You know, of course, Lee, that Dad is as poor as a sharecropper and he’s governor in the most puritanical state of the Union. If Grace had come out with what she knew, it would not only have ruined his chances as presidential nominee, it would—or it might have almost ruined the family financially.” I didn’t press him for details. I was too startled and shocked by the new side of Grace’s character which was gradually emerging from the ghastly tangle of last night. In the past I had always seen her as a pathetic, slightly colorless girl lost in her own wispy daydreams. Now there was not only Robert Hudnutt, there was Steve, too. Grace Hough had put the screws on both of them.

  For the first time I could see that it was not so utterly incredible after all that Grace Hough should have come to a violent end.

  The stars were sliding out, very bright in the cloudless sky. A pale shaft of light struck down on the little manikin at the edge of the pool, giving him a false, rather sinister illusion of life.

  Steve said suddenly: “So she forced my hand, Lee. I did take her to the quarry and I left her there. It had started to drizzle. I—when I saw her last she was standing at the mouth of the quarry in the rain, all het up and excited, peering down the road, waiting for somebody.” His hand searched for mine again and found it. “That’s all I know about Grace’s death. I swear it, Lee.”

  I believed him. There was some stubborn factor inside me which refused even to consider the possibility that anyone I was fond of could deliberately lie to me on anything so vital.

  “You do believe me, don’t you, Lee?” Steve was asking urgently.

  “Of course I believe you.” Suddenly I felt utterly tired and spent. “So that’s what you want me to pass on to Lieutenan
t Trant?”

  “Yes. You see that he’s got to know, not only that Grace came back to Wentworth, but also about the date at the quarry. They’re probably the crux of the whole thing. Of course her date might have been with the red-haired naval officer coming back again, but it does look rather as if my story will eliminate him.” His voice was quiet. “But if he is counted out, I’ve got enough sense to realize just what kind of a spot it puts me in. I seem to be slated for the well-worn role of Last Person to See Deceased Alive.”

  Impulsively I said: “Steve, why not come right out and tell him your real reason for leaving the Amber Club last night? It’d be safer.”

  I could just make out the thin set line of his mouth. “No, Lee, I can’t tell him.”

  “And you won’t tell me?”

  “Not even you.”

  “But there’s one thing I’ve got to know.” I forced myself to ask the question which had been bothering me so insistently. “Last night when you left the Club so suddenly, you told me not to discuss the matter with Grace. You had a telephone call. You’ve got to tell me if your leaving or that telephone call had anything to do with Grace.”

  He hesitated before answering. “I can tell you this much. It had no direct bearing on her death. But there’s something else I want you to know, Lee. Something pretty queer which I couldn’t help overhearing last night. It happened after I left Grace. When I was delivering the second of those two letters for her.”

  I nodded, inwardly prepared for almost anything.

  “First I slipped the one for Jerry under the door of the infirmary, then I went over to the Hudnutts’ house. Just as I got on the front porch, I heard voices inside the hall. Naturally I didn’t want any faculty member to see me at that time of night, so I dodged back behind some bushes. The door opened and a man and a woman came out. I couldn’t have moved without their seeing me. They were Hudnutt and Marcia Parrish.”

  He broke off, adding rather awkwardly: “I hate to sound like a snooper, but do you think Hudnutt and Marcia Parrish could be having some sort of an—affair?”

  “It’s absolutely impossible,” I said indignantly. But immediately after I had spoken, I thought of Marcia passionately pleading with me to stand by Robert.

  “Don’t want to talk scandal,” Steve was saying, looking down at his shoes. “It’s just that what I heard them say made me wonder. I could see Hudnutt’s face plainly in the light from the hall. He looked like death. Then I heard him say: ‘We’ve got to tell her, Marcia. It’s ruining my work—everything.’ And Marcia Parrish said: ‘We can’t tell her just now, Robert.’ And Hudnutt gave a desperate sort of laugh and said: ‘Don’t be surprised if I commit murder, that’s all.’ Marcia Parrish laughed, too. She said: ‘If there’s any killing to be done, leave that to me. Women are so much better at that kind of thing, and I’m as deeply involved as you are.’”

  Steve was running his fingers through his thick black hair. “I wouldn’t tell even you what I heard next, Lee, if there was any chance of my having got it balled up. But I heard it. I swear I did. It was Hudnutt who said it. He took both of Marcia Parrish’s arms and said: ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, my dear. I’ll never forget that even when my hands were stained with blood you stood by me and rescued me from the particular hell reserved for murderers.’ That was all. I thought he would see Marcia Parrish into her car, but it was Hudnutt who got into the car and Miss Parrish who went back into the house.”

  “Marcia stayed and Robert went off in a car?”

  He nodded. “I pushed Grace’s note for the Dean in their mailbox right away, then I took my car to the college garage and went back to Broome.”

  Coming on top of everything else, that was just one thing too much for my exhausted brain. I didn’t even try to make sense of it.

  Very weakly I said: “And that’s all? You—you didn’t see anything else?”

  “Well, I had my own problems to worry me and, naturally, I didn’t know about Grace at the time. I didn’t pay as much attention to it all as I might have done. But I do remember seeing one thing just after I’d parked at the garage. Mrs. Hudnutt’s big yellow sedan went by me hell for leather. I had the crazy idea that Penelope had gone off chasing her wandering husband. I didn’t see anyone else. Wait … I did, too.” He gave his old spontaneous laugh. “Just before I got to Broome I heard what I thought was a wild animal charging across the campus. Gave me quite a scare at first. What d’you think it was? Your Newhampton boy-friend, the Big Appel, off for one of his small hour rowing practices on the river, all fat knees and shorts and sculls.”

  Somewhere, from far away across the campus, I heard a boy shouting and another boy calling back. It reminded me that college life was still moving along its leisurely way—that, in spite of the miasma which enshrouded us, Wentworth students were working, not working, thinking of Saturday’s game and what to wear for the Senior Ball—with Grace little more to them than an ephemeral thrill.

  The contrast between all that and us was suddenly more than I could bear. Almost before I realized, I was leaning against Steve’s shoulder, crying like a baby.

  One of his arms slipped around me, supporting me. His warm fingers were stroking my hair.

  “Bear up, darling,” he whispered. “I know it’s tough as hell. But we’ve got to take it.”

  I hated breaking down that way.

  “Sorry, Steve,” I faltered. “But suddenly everything seemed pretty grim.”

  We got up and stood there, facing each other in the vivid starlight. With a quick, impulsive gesture, he drew me toward him and kissed me very gently on the lips.

  “It’ll stop being grim—one day,” he said.

  We turned our backs on the fountain and moved away toward the campus.

  But before we left the formal garden I caught one last glimpse of the little manikin crouched over the lily-pads, intent and vaguely evil.

  I had the distinct impression that he was leering at me.

  X

  Steve and I felt we couldn’t face Commons that evening. We sneaked off together to the one cafeteria in Wentworth. We ate as little as we talked. Grace seemed very near and every attempt at conversation led inevitably back to her.

  I suppose it was about eight-thirty when I said goodnight to Steve and returned to Pigot. My room was somehow different. I noticed that my work notes, which were usually strewn at random, were heaped in neat piles; the things on the dressing-table had been rearranged. Only gradually did it occur to me that the place had been searched by the police.

  Even here Grace’s ghost followed me.

  My talk with Steve had worried me terribly, not only because he too had been caught up in the web of suspicion, but because what he said made it so very evident that Marcia Parrish knew very much more than she had told me.

  I had almost made up my mind to go and see her when a voice behind me drawled:

  “So you’re in circulation again, darling.”

  Norma Sayler lounged into the room, stunning in a box-sleevéd housecoat of white and gold brocade.

  She sank down onto Grace’s empty bed, watching me sardonically through long lashes. “They tell me you and the New York detective are soul-mates.”

  At first I attributed the malice in her voice to jealousy. Norma was just the type to envy my unenviable position in the spotlight. Then, for one instant, I saw the lashes flicker and I realized she was nervous.

  Her voice was just a shade too casual as she added: “By the way, has your Sherlock invaded the infirmary yet?”

  I knew then exactly what was bothering her and I was too tired to beat about the bush.

  “You needn’t worry,” I said. “Lieutenant Trant doesn’t know it was you who tore up Jerry’s letters from Grace. He doesn’t even know your name was mentioned in them. Jerry said he’d destroyed them himself, and I backed him up.”

  “You backed him up?” Norma tried to conceal a very obvious relief behind exaggerated nonchalance. “My dear, how sweet of
you to do that for me.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” I said bluntly. “I did it because Jerry was fool enough to want to keep you out of it and I promised to stand by him. Incidentally, by destroying that letter you may easily have done him out of Grace’s insurance money. But then, that wouldn’t interest you, would it?”

  Norma patted one delicate ear and said: “I rather suspected you’d twist things round so that I’d be the villain of the piece.”

  As she stared at me, her red lips parted in a smile, I thought about that insurance money for the first time and realized just how it might affect us all. I wanted Jerry to have it, of course. But, if everything worked out, he would be comparatively rich—rich enough for Norma to marry.

  I think it was the realization of this, coupled with Norma’s maddening condescension, that made me decide I would come out in the open and put up a fight for Jerry.

  As a declaration of war, I said: “I’d very much like to know what Lieutenant Trant would think if he heard you’d torn up those letters.”

  Norma propped herself up on one brocaded elbow. “And what do you mean by that little crack?”

  “Yesterday when you accepted Jerry’s orchids and, on your own showing, almost accepted his fraternity pin, he was practically penniless. Now he’ll presumably be rich. Grace would have been a real stumbling block to his marrying you. Now—well, she isn’t a stumbling block any more.”

  Very slowly and deliberately Norma lit a cigarette, her eyes behind the blue smoke intent as a cat’s. “This is intensely amusing, darling. Go on.”

  “It gets funnier and funnier,” I said, and had the satisfaction of getting an impatient “Well?” from Norma.

  “The police know Grace wrote a letter last night,” I said. “A letter to someone who hasn’t admitted it yet. Supposing it was to you, making a date somewhere. You have a car. You could easily have gone out last night and met Grace. Suppose she told you she’d found out something about you, something she threatened to let everyone else know unless you promised to lay off Jerry. Wouldn’t that explain just why you tore up the letter she wrote about you to Jerry—so that the police wouldn’t even begin to connect you with Grace’s death?”